About Healthy Weight PRU

The Healthy Weight Policy Research Unit (HWPRU) aims to deliver the evidence needed to help the government develop and implement policies that support people to maintain and achieve a healthy weight across the life-course, and reduce the prevalence and burden of obesity.

Aim

Our goal is to undertake research of the highest quality to support the Department of Health and Social Care (England) and its partners to:

Combat the environments and systems that drive obesity;
Modify behaviours that encourage obesity;
Reduce health inequalities and the consequences of obesity across the life-span.

Vision

We will work in partnership with people with lived experience, policymakers, clinicians, and other stakeholders:

To provide the evidence needed to help government deploy policy to reduce the prevalence and burden of obesity and its comorbidities across the life-course.
To work with world-class researchers from a broad range of backgrounds. To work effectively with patients and public representatives.
To use cutting-edge methodologies

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are central to the way the collaboration works and to the work itself, including our focus on inequalities and research gaps. Our work will focus on multiple disadvantages, including gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and socioeconomic status. This is enabled by our commitment to engagement with and involvement of diverse stakeholders throughout the research and policy cycle and integration of reproductive rights as a cross-cutting concern.

Research partners

The Policy Research Unit in Healthy Weight is a collaboration between the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Obesity Voices, City University London, University of Liverpool, University of Birmingham, Leeds Beckett University and University of Oxford.